More stories

  • in

    159 Films, for Every Taste, Coming This Fall

    From art house to hellhouse and back, here’s a select list of the most anticipated titles this season, including “The Fabelmans,” “White Noise” and more.Steven Spielberg returns to his childhood, Ryan Coogler returns to Wakanda and James Cameron returns to Pandora in just some of the films coming out this fall, following what was generally perceived as a blah summer for movies. And these listings are just a start. Some titles, like “Causeway,” with Jennifer Lawrence, and the Cannes prizewinner “Close,” hadn’t settled on release dates by press time.And it should be noted: This is a highly select list of noteworthy films. Release dates are subject to change and reflect the latest information as of deadline.TERRA FEMME Courtney Stephens (a director of the experimental documentary “The American Sector”) presents travelogues shot by women from the 1920s to the ’50s. It’s an essay film, of sorts, although Stephens will narrate it in person at two screenings at Anthology Film Archives. (Sept. 15 in theaters)THE AFRICAN DESPERATE The artist Martine Syms makes her feature-directing debut with this film about a graduate student (Diamond Stingily) on her last day of art school. It closed last spring’s edition of the New Directors/New Films series. (Sept. 16 in theaters)Diamond Stingily in “The African Desperate,” from the artist Martine Syms. Dominica Inc.CASABLANCA BEATS Nabil Ayouch directed this drama about a former hip-hop artist teaching Moroccan youth to rap. (Sept. 16 in theaters)CONFESS, FLETCH Is Jon Hamm the 2022 equivalent of Chevy Chase circa 1985? Not exactly: Greg Mottola (“Superbad”) directed Hamm as the sleuth I.M. Fletcher in a fresh adaptation of the second novel in the author Gregory Mcdonald’s mystery series. The comedian Roy Wood Jr. and Kyle MacLachlan are in the cast. (Sept. 16 in theaters and on demand)DO REVENGE Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke put a high school comedy spin on “Strangers on a Train”; each one plays a student who sets out to get payback on the other’s enemies. (Sept. 16 on Netflix)DRIFTING HOME Hiroyasu Ishida directed this anime feature about two friends in a housing complex that somehow winds up floating through an ocean. (Sept. 16 on Netflix)FOUR WINTERS Julia Mintz directed this documentary, which features interviews with surviving partisans who fought the Nazis from the woods of Eastern Europe. (Sept. 16 in theaters)FROM THE HOOD TO THE HOLLER Charles Booker, the Democratic candidate running to unseat Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky this fall, is profiled in a documentary. (Sept. 16 in theaters, Sept. 30 on demand)GOD’S COUNTRY Thandiwe Newton plays an academic in a remote area of the West who faces hostility from hunters who insist on parking on her property. Julian Higgins directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters, Oct. 4 on demand)GOODNIGHT MOMMY Naomi Watts stars in a remake of an Austrian horror film released here in 2015. In that movie, which Jeannette Catsoulis praised in The New York Times as a “carefully controlled creep-out,” twins begin to suspect that the woman who has returned from the hospital, her face wrapped in bandages, is not, in fact, their mother. (Sept. 16 on Amazon)MOONAGE DAYDREAM Brett Morgen (“Jane”) compiled this prismatic, all-archival survey of the career of David Bowie. It’s said to be the first cinematic portrait supported by the singer’s estate and uses what are described as rare materials. Screenings in Imax theaters are planned. (Sept. 16 in theaters)PEARL If you saw Ti West’s retro-horror film “X” in theaters earlier this year and stayed through the credits, you would have caught a surprise teaser for this prequel, which stars West’s co-writer, Mia Goth, as a younger version of the farmer’s wife she also played — albeit unrecognizably — in one of her two roles in the first movie. (Sept. 16 in theaters)RIOTSVILLE, U.S.A. When this nonfiction feature from Sierra Pettengill played at the New Directors/New Films series last spring, Manohla Dargis described it as “a mesmerizing documentary essay that tracks American anti-Black racism through a wealth of disturbing, at times super-freaky 1960s archival footage.” (Sept. 16 in theaters)A scene from the documentary “Riotsville, U.S.A.,” which uses archival footage from the 1960s.CineticSEE HOW THEY RUN Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell plays police partners investigating a murder in the 1950s London theater scene. Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson and David Oyelowo also star. Tom George directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)THE SILENT TWINS Based on the 1986 nonfiction book by Marjorie Wallace, this drama concerns twins who for much of their lives did not speak, except with each other. Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance star. Agnieszka Smoczynska (“The Lure”) directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)THE WOMAN KING In a drama drawn from the history of the Agojie, also known as the Dahomey Amazons, Viola Davis plays a general leading an army of women in a fight to protect their West African kingdom from slavers in the 19th century. Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and John Boyega also star. Gina Prince-Bythewood directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND The documentarian Iliana Sosa pays tribute to her grandfather, who is nearly 90, as he builds a house in Mexico. (Sept. 16 in theaters and on NetflixME TO PLAY This documentary watches as two actors with Parkinson’s disease prepare a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame.” (Sept. 20 on Fandor)ESCAPE FROM KABUL A year after the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, this documentary assembles footage and recollections from people who were present during the evacuation at the airport in Kabul. (Sept. 21 on HBO Max)MEET CUTE Per the title, Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson meet in a manner that is cute. Or have they already met cute? A time machine is involved. (Sept. 21 on Peacock)RAVEN’S HOLLOW That’s not just any raven. William Moseley plays Edgar Allan Poe during his time as a West Point cadet, before he found fame as a writer. The young Poe stumbles into a mystery. (Sept. 22 on Shudder)THE AMERICAN DREAM AND OTHER FAIRY TALES Abigail E. Disney, who directed with Kathleen Hughes, serves as an onscreen guide to an examination of income inequality in the United States, not sparing her family’s own business ventures. (Sept. 23 in theaters)ATHENA Dali Benssalah plays a young man whose brother dies after an encounter with police. His other brothers and his neighborhood grapple with their response. Romain Gavras directed. The filmmaker Ladj Ly, who shared a prize at Cannes in 2019 for “Les Misérables,” is among the screenwriters. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)BANDIT In a feature inspired by a real case from the 1980s, Josh Duhamel plays a robber who pulls off heists across Canada. He also goes into business with a loan shark (Mel Gibson). Elisha Cuthbert co-stars. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand)BLANK A writer secludes herself to get some work done, and the android there, having gone on the fritz, really wants her to finish her project. Natalie Kennedy directed. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand)CARMEN Natascha McElhone plays a woman in Malta who, at 50, leaves the church she has pledged herself to since her teenage years and finds romance. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand) CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY When you hear the name Lena Dunham, you don’t exactly think 13th century — but that’s when this irreverent costume picture, which Dunham adapted from Karen Cushman’s novel and directed, is set. Bella Ramsey plays a rebellious teenager whose father tries to marry her off. With Lesley Sharp, Sophie Okonedo and Joe Alwyn. (Sept. 23 in theaters, Oct. 7 on demand)DON’T WORRY DARLING Florence Pugh plays a 1950s housewife who lives with her husband (Harry Styles) in a company town that, apart from the desert scenery, has a certain affinity with Stepford, Conn., judging from the trailer. Olivia Wilde co-stars and directed this thriller, which also features Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne and Chris Pine. (Sept. 23 in theaters)Olivia Wilde, left, appears in and directed Nick Kroll and Chris Pine in “Don’t Worry Darling.”Warner Bros.THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER You thought Smokey and the Bandit had the greatest beer run? Not so. Zac Efron plays Chick Donohue, a New Yorker who in 1967 traveled to Vietnam to bring brews to his American soldier pals. Peter Farrelly, seemingly splitting the difference between his comedies and the earnestness of “Green Book,” directed. With Russell Crowe and Bill Murray. (Sept. 23 in theaters; Sept. 30 on Apple TV+)INVISIBLE DEMONS The documentarian Rahul Jain (“Machines”) looks at the impact of pollution and climate change in Delhi. (Sept. 23 in theaters)A JAZZMAN’S BLUES Tyler Perry wrote, produced and directed this decades-spanning story of two lovers (Joshua Boone and Solea Pfeiffer) in the South. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)THE JUSTICE OF BUNNY KING In a drama from New Zealand, Essie Davis (“The Babadook”) plays a down-and-out mother scrambling to avoid breaking a promise to her daughter. Thomasin McKenzie plays her niece. (Sept. 23 in theaters)LOU Jurnee Smollett plays the mother of a kidnapped girl and Allison Janney the neighbor who helps her retrieve her. Anna Foerster directed, and J.J. Abrams is among the producers. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)MY IMAGINARY COUNTRY The celebrated Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán directed this documentary about the efforts for social change catalyzed by the protests that began in his country in 2019. (Sept. 23 in theaters)NOTHING COMPARES Sinead O’Connor looks back on her singing career and the height of her fame in the 1980s and ’90s. Kathryn Ferguson directed. (Sept. 23 in theaters, Sept. 30 on Showtime)ON THE COME UP Based on a novel by Angie Thomas (“The Hate U Give”), the actress Sanaa Lathan’s feature-directing debut centers on a teenage rap artist (Jamila C. Gray) who is faced with pressure to sell out. (Sept. 23 on Paramount+)PETROV’S FLU The dissident Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov directed this fever dream of a film, based on a novel by Alexey Salnikov and centered on a comics artist (Semyon Serzin) in the grip of the grippe. (Sept. 23 in theaters)RAILWAY CHILDREN In Britain this was known as “The Railway Children Return,” a sequel to the 1970 film “The Railway Children.” It’s set in 1944 and finds Jenny Agutter playing an older version of a character she originated as a teenager. (Sept. 23 in theaters)SIDNEY Reginald Hudlin directed this documentary on the career of Sidney Poitier, who died in January. It includes interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington and Spike Lee. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on Apple TV+)BLONDE A faintly recognizable Ana de Armas embodies one of the most recognizable women on the planet — Marilyn Monroe — in this much-anticipated, NC-17-rated adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s 2000 novel. The film comes from Andrew Dominik (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”), in his first dramatic feature in a decade. Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody also star. (Sept. 28 on Netflix)Ana de Armas goes blond for “Blonde,” from Andrew Dominik.NetflixARGENTINA, 1985 The Argentine director Santiago Mitre (“Paulina”) directed this legal drama based on the work of Julio Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo, who prosecuted members of the junta that had controlled the country from 1976 to 1983. (Sept. 30 in theaters, Oct. 21 on Amazon)ART & KRIMES BY KRIMES Alysa Nahmias directed this portrait of Jesse Krimes, who made artwork in prison and managed to get it to the world outside. Now out of prison, he had his work featured in an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last year. (Sept. 30 in theaters)Luke Macfarlane, left, and Billy Eichner in the rom-com “Bros.”Universal PicturesBROS Billy Eichner stars in — and wrote, with the movie’s director, Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) — this rom-com about two men, seemingly opposites, falling for each other. Universal is billing it as the “first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably, stumbling towards love.” Judd Apatow is among the producers. (Sept. 30 in theaters)DEAD FOR A DOLLAR One of the few remaining filmmakers who knows his way around a western, Walter Hill directed this story of a bounty hunter, an outlaw and an abducted woman. Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe and Rachel Brosnahan star. (Sept. 30 in theaters)GOD’S CREATURES In an Irish village that runs on oyster harvesting, a mother (Emily Watson) has to face a truth about her son (Paul Mescal), who has just returned home. Aisling Franciosi (“The Nightingale”) also stars. Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, who collaborated on “The Fits,” directed. (Sept. 30 in theaters and on demand)THE GOOD HOUSE An alcoholic Massachusetts real estate agent (Sigourney Weaver) and a man from her past (Kevin Kline) get back together. Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky directed. (Sept. 30 in theaters)HOCUS POCUS 2 Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy reprise their roles as witches in a sequel to “Hocus Pocus” (1993). (Sept. 30 on Disney+)Kathy Najimy, left, Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker are back for “Hocus Pocus 2.”Disney+I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE In an essay film that considers how the disabled perceive the world and are perceived, the director Reid Davenport shot this debut feature from his own perspective as a wheelchair user. (Sept. 30 in theaters)MONA LISA AND THE BLOOD MOON A woman who has escaped from a mental institution (Jong-seo Jun, from “Burning”) joins forces with a heavily Brooklyn-accented mother (Kate Hudson) in New Orleans for a crime spree in the latest film from Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”). (Sept. 30 in theaters and on demand)MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM Elsie Fisher (“Eighth Grade”) finds out how to get her pal (Amiah Miller) a — well, you know. (Sept. 30 on Amazon)SIRENS Rita Baghdadi directed this documentary, well regarded at Sundance, about an all-female thrash metal band in Lebanon. (Sept. 30 in theaters)SMILE You’ve heard of six degrees of Kevin Bacon? How about six degrees of a … weird chain curse that causes victims to see creepy smiling faces before they die? Into this chain enters a doctor played by Sosie Bacon, daughter of the actor and Kyra Sedgwick. It sounds like “The Ring” with grins instead of a videotape. (Sept. 30 in theaters)OctoberMR. HARRIGAN’S PHONE Jaeden Martell plays a teenager whose friendship with a billionaire (Donald Sutherland) continues after the older man dies and is buried with an iPhone. John Lee Hancock directed this adaptation of a novella by Stephen King. (Oct. 5 on Netflix)AMSTERDAM Based on a trailer, the writer-director David O. Russell’s first feature since “Joy” (2015) will be maddeningly difficult to classify, genre-wise. It comes described as a historical crime epic involving three friends (played by Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington). A dead body is involved, as are many other starry names: Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert De Niro and even Taylor Swift. (Oct. 7 in theaters)Christian Bale, left, Margot Robbie and John David Washington team up for “Amsterdam.”20th Century StudiosBATTLEGROUND This documentary from Cynthia Lowen had its world premiere at Tribeca in June, less than two weeks before the Supreme Court handed down its decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The movie chronicles the work of anti-abortion activists who were trying to achieve that goal. (Oct. 7 in theaters)HELLRAISER The director David Bruckner (“The Night House”) resurrects a gender-swapped Pinhead (now played by Jamie Clayton) in a remake. (Oct. 7 on Hulu)LAST FLIGHT HOME The documentarian Ondi Timoner made this portrait of her father, Eli Timoner, who chose to end his life under a California law that permits certain terminally ill patients to do so. (Oct. 7 in theaters)LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE Mila Kunis stars in this adaptation of Jessica Knoll’s 2015 novel, about a magazine writer coping with the aftermath of a sexual assault she experienced as a teenager. Knoll wrote the screenplay. Mike Barker directed. (Oct. 7 on Netflix)LYLE, LYLE, CROCODILE The titular anthropomorphic reptile of Bernard Waber’s children’s books comes to the screen as a computer-generated creation surrounded by real actors. The pop star Shawn Mendes provides his voice and sings songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“The Greatest Showman”). Javier Bardem and Constance Wu are among the actors appearing in the flesh. (Oct. 7 in theaters)Constance Wu, Javier Bardem and Winslow Fegley take a reptile for a ride in “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.”Sarah Shatz/Sony PicturesONODA: 10,000 NIGHTS IN THE JUNGLE This epically scaled yet cerebral biopic tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who until 1974 labored under the delusion that World War II was still happening and continued to prosecute it in his way from an island in the Philippines. (Coincidentally, Onoda is also the subject of Werner Herzog’s recent debut novel.) Arthur Harari directed. Yuya Endo and Kanji Tsuda play Onoda at different ages. (Oct. 7 in theaters)THE REDEEM TEAM Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and others look back on how the United States’ basketball team won the gold in the 2008 Olympics. Jon Weinbach, a producer on the Michael Jordan series “The Last Dance,” directed. (Oct. 7 on Netflix)TÁR The actor-filmmaker Todd Field won acclaim for directing “In the Bedroom” (2001) and “Little Children” (2006) but hasn’t stepped behind the camera to make a feature since then. That changes with this film, about the (fictitious) conductor of a German orchestra. Cate Blanchett no doubt brings the requisite intensity to the title character. (Oct. 7 in theaters)Cate Blanchett as a conductor in “Tár,” directed by Todd Field.Focus FeaturesTO LESLIE Andrea Riseborough plays a Texas mom who wins the lottery, squanders the proceeds, turns to booze — then tries to get her life back in order. Allison Janney, Stephen Root and Marc Maron also star. (Oct. 7 in theaters and on demand)TRIANGLE OF SADNESS The Swedish director Ruben Ostlund won his second Palme d’Or at Cannes (his first was for “The Square” in 2017) for this sendup of the very, very, very wealthy and vain, a group that includes two models (played by Charlbi Dean, who died at 32 in August, and Harris Dickinson) and a Russian oligarch (Zlatko Buric) — all passengers on a cruise liner with a Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson). (Oct. 7 in theaters)DARK GLASSES The giallo maestro Dario Argento is still spilling blood in his 80s. His new thriller concerns a prostitute and a boy who are on the trail of a serial killer who wronged them both. Asia Argento, Dario’s daughter, has a supporting role. (Oct. 7 in theaters; Oct. 13 on Shudder)THE CURSE OF BRIDGE HOLLOW Marlon Wayans and Priah Ferguson play a father and daughter who try to save Halloween from vivified holiday decorations. (Oct. 14 on Netflix)DECISION TO LEAVE The South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (“The Handmaiden”) won the best-director prize at Cannes for this labyrinthine thriller, which centers on a detective (Park Hae-il) who becomes infatuated with a woman (Tang Wei) who may or may not have murdered her husband. (Oct. 14 in theaters)Park Hae-il, left, and Tang Wei in the newest film from Park Chan-wook, “Decision to Leave.”MubiHALLOWEEN ENDS Does it really? Come now. This franchise will never end. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) takes one more whack at killing the killer. David Gordon Green takes one more whack at directing. (Oct. 14 in theaters)THE OTHER TOM Laura Santullo and Rodrigo Plá directed this drama about an El Paso mother who stops medicating her son for A.D.H.D. and risks losing custody of him. (Oct. 14 in theaters)PIGGY A girl (Laura Galán) who is bullied by her peers lucks out, in a way, when they are kidnapped. She has to decide whether to reveal the culprit. Carlota Pereda directed. (Oct. 14 in theaters and on demand)ROSALINE Tom Stoppard gave us “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” Now Hulu gives us “Rosaline,” which in the same spirit views the events of a major play (“Romeo and Juliet”) from the perspective of a peripheral character: the Capulet girl Romeo pined for before Juliet. And in this telling, Rosaline (Kaitlyn Dever) tries to get him back. Isabela Merced and Kyle Allen play the star-cross’d lovers. (Oct. 14 on Hulu)SELL/BUY/DATE In a movie said to combine documentary and dramatization, Sarah Jones, who wrote and performed a 2016 show of the same title at City Center, investigates the nature of sex work. (Oct. 14 in theaters)SEPA: OUR LORD OF MIRACLES When it was shown at MoMA’s To Save and Project series earlier this year, this little-known 1987 documentary was billed as “having languished in a closet for 30 years.” Directed by Walter Saxer, a longtime production manager for Werner Herzog, it captures life at a penal colony in the Peruvian jungle. (Oct. 14 in theaters)Jamie Lee Curtis goes one last round — we think — with Michael Myers in “Halloween Ends.”Universal PicturesSTARS AT NOON The second English-language feature from the French director Claire Denis (and her second feature of the year, after “Both Sides of the Blade”) pivots on the relationship between an American journalist (Margaret Qualley) and a British oil company consultant (Joe Alwyn) in Nicaragua. Their sweaty trysts play out against a backdrop of international intrigue. Denis shared the Grand Jury Prize (basically second place) at Cannes this year. (Oct. 14 in theaters and on demand)TILL Chinonye Chukwu, who won the top prize at Sundance for “Clemency,” directed this biopic, centered on the efforts of Mamie Till Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler) to seek justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall). (Oct. 14 in theaters)THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL The children’s book series by Soman Chainani becomes the start of a potential “Harry Potter”-esque movie franchise. Sophia Anne Caruso and Sofia Wylie star as best friends at a new (and magical) school. Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington chaperone. (Oct. 19 on Netflix)V/H/S/99 If the fifth film in this horror-anthology franchise has already reached 1999, we must be due for “D/V/D” soon. (Oct. 20 on Shudder)AFTERSUN The Scottish director Charlotte Wells’s debut was one of the big discoveries in Cannes this year. It follows a young father (Paul Mescal) and his daughter (Frankie Corio), who normally lives with her mother, on a vanishingly brief resort getaway that will lastingly shape her impressions of her dad. (Oct. 21 in theaters)ALL THAT BREATHES Shaunak Sen’s documentary, which won the top international-documentary prize at Sundance, concerns two brothers in India who work to protect and care for black kites, a type of bird. (Oct. 21 in theaters)AMERICAN MURDERER An F.B.I. agent (Ryan Phillippe) pursues a con artist (Tom Pelphrey). Idina Menzel and Jacki Weaver also star. (Oct. 21 in theaters, Oct. 28 on demand)THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN Martin McDonagh’s new film isn’t a sequel to his “In Bruges,” but it does reunite Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, who resume their acerbic bantering as two friends who no longer get along. With Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. (Oct. 21 in theaters)BLACK ADAM Dwayne Johnson plays the latest DC Comics character — who has the powers of Egyptian gods — to get a big-screen feature. Aldis Hodge and Pierce Brosnan co-star. Jaume Collet-Serra directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters)Dwayne Johnson makes his bow as the title character in “Black Adam.”Warner Bros.BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER In a documentary version of a talk she has given, the filmmaker Nina Menkes (“Queen of Diamonds”) takes viewers through a wide variety of film clips to examine how sexism has been encoded in basic film grammar. (Oct. 21 in theaters)DESCENDANT Margaret Brown’s documentary involves the search for the Clotilda, the last-known ship that brought enslaved people to the United States, and the Mobile, Ala., residents who are descendants of those aboard. (Oct. 21 on Netflix)FACE A 2009 feature from the director Tsai Ming-liang gets a belated run in New York, as part of a retrospective of Tsai’s work at the Museum of Modern Art that was itself postponed by the pandemic. (Oct. 21 in theaters)MY POLICEMAN The lives of a policeman, a teacher and a curator intertwine in the 1950s and again in the 1990s. Harry Styles ages into Linus Roache, Emma Corrin into Gina McKee and David Dawson into Rupert Everett. Michael Grandage directed this adaptation of the novel by Bethan Roberts. (Oct. 21 in theaters, Nov. 4 on Amazon)Harry Styles and Emma Corrin in “My Policeman,” set in the 1950s and the ’90s.Parisa Taghizadeh/Amazon StudiosRAYMOND & RAY Ethan Hawke and Ewan McGregor play half brothers. Their father’s funeral offers an opportunity to figure out where they stand. Rodrigo García directed. (Oct. 21 on Apple TV+)THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER — FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE This documentary concerns the cross-generational friendship between the two singers of the title — Tucker a pioneering country-music star, Carlile a fan who wrote an album for her. (Oct. 21 in theaters)ROUGE The Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan’s 1988 feature — with Anita Mui as a ghost looking for the man (Leslie Cheung) she loved in the 1930s — finally gets a New York run. (Oct. 21 in theaters)2ND CHANCE Turning to documentaries, Ramin Bahrani — nominated for an adapted screenplay Oscar for “The White Tiger” — examines the legacy of Richard Davis, who devised the contemporary version of the bulletproof vest. (Oct. 21 in theaters)SLASH/BACK Aliens arrive at 66 degrees north — or more specifically, a hamlet in Nunavut where teenagers are prepared to fend them off. Nyla Innuksuk directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters and on demand)TICKET TO PARADISE Julia Roberts and George Clooney play ex-spouses who hate each other but join forces on the cusp of the wedding of their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) to prevent her from getting married. Ol Parker directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters)VOODOO MACBETH Made by a whopping 10 directors working collaboratively, this film dramatizes the making of Orson Welles’s famed “voodoo Macbeth” production, staged in 1936 in Harlem with an all-Black cast. With Inger Tudor and, as Welles, Jewell Wilson Bridges. (Oct. 21 in theaters)THE GOOD NURSE Jessica Chastain is the title character, who investigates whether a string of patient deaths might have been murder. Eddie Redmayne plays the object of her suspicions. It’s based on a nonfiction book. Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“Last Night in Soho”) wrote the screenplay. Tobias Lindholm directed. (Oct. 26 on Netflix)Jessica Chastain is a caregiver who doesn’t necessarily trust her colleagues in “The Good Nurse.”JoJo Whilden/NetflixALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT The latest screen version of Erich Maria Remarque’s chronicle of German soldiers during World War I has the soldiers speaking their native language. (Lewis Milestone’s Oscar-winning 1930 film with Lew Ayres was in English.) The cast includes Felix Kammerer and Daniel Brühl. Edward Berger directed. (Oct. 28 on Netflix)ARMAGEDDON TIME James Gray’s latest film, filled with elements of barely veiled autobiography, centers on an artistically inclined Jewish boy (Banks Repeta) growing up in Queens in 1980, and on his friendship with a Black classmate (Jaylin Webb) who doesn’t get the same breaks he does. Anthony Hopkins plays the protagonist’s British-born grandfather, and Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong play the boy’s parents. (Oct. 28 in theaters)CALL JANE The second of two films to be released this year about the Jane Collective, a group of women in Chicago who provided abortions before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973. “The Janes” was a documentary; this is a dramatization, with Elizabeth Banks as a woman who seeks out the group for an abortion and subsequently joins the women who run it. Sigourney Weaver co-stars. Phyllis Nagy (the screenwriter of “Carol”) directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)HOLY SPIDER Zar Amir Ebrahimi won the best-actress prize at Cannes for playing a journalist in Iran on the trail of a serial killer the police seem to be in no hurry to catch. Ali Abbasi (“Border”) directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)THE NOVELIST’S FILM It’s the South Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s custom to premiere two films every year. (“Walk Up,” his other 2022 offering, is playing at fall festivals.) Lee Hyeyoung plays a writer who aspires to make a movie. The Hong regular Kim Minhee co-stars. (Oct. 28 in theaters)PLEASE BABY PLEASE A couple of Lower East Siders (Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling) witness a gang killing in the 1950s. Amanda Kramer directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)RUN SWEETHEART RUN Long-delayed since its premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, this thriller stars Ella Balinska as a woman terrorized by her date (Pilou Asbaek). Shana Feste directed. (Oct. 28 on Amazon)WENDELL & WILD Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key reunite to provide voices for two demons who try to persuade a teenager to help break them out of their demonic realm. Peele wrote it with Henry Selick (“Coraline”), who directed. Angela Bassett and James Hong are also in the vocal cast. (Oct. 28 on Netflix)Sweetie (voiced by Ramona Young) and Sister Helley (voiced by Angela Bassett) in “Wendell & Wild.”NetflixNovemberTHE BOX In Mexico, a teenager preparing to bury his father begins to wonder if his dad is still alive. Lorenzo Vigas directed. (Nov. 4 in theaters)ENOLA HOLMES 2 Millie Bobby Brown returns as a sister of Sherlock Holmes who now has a detective agency of her own. Henry Cavill, David Thewlis and Helena Bonham Carter also star. (Nov. 4 on Netflix)GOOD NIGHT OPPY “Oppy” is Opportunity, a rover that roamed Martian craters from 2004 until its “death” in 2019. This documentary tells Oppy’s story. (Nov. 4 in theaters, Nov. 23 on Amazon)I’M TOTALLY FINE Jillian Bell plays a woman who believes her best friend (Natalie Morales) has died — only to have the pal return, possibly as a space alien. (Nov. 4 in theaters and on demand)MEMORIES OF MY FATHER Fernando Trueba directed this adaptation of a book by the Colombian novelist Héctor Abad Faciolince, about the author’s father (played by Javier Cámara), a doctor engaged in political activism in the 1970s. (Nov. 4 in theaters)SALVATORE: SHOEMAKER OF DREAMS Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”) directed this biographical portrait of the shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo, working from his 1955 memoir. Michael Stuhlbarg narrates. (Nov. 4 in theaters)SOMETHING IN THE DIRT The directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson also wrote and star in this determinedly lo-fi and paranoid science-fiction feature. It revolves around two men who witness what they think is a supernatural occurrence, an event that sends them spinning into elaborate theorizing. (Nov. 4 in theaters, Nov. 22 on demand)UTAMA The winner of the top prize for an international dramatic feature at Sundance, Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s film is set in the Bolivian highlands, where an Indigenous couple (José Calcina and Luisa Quispe) confront the problems posed by a drought. (Nov. 4 in theaters)Luisa Quispe in “Utama,” set in the drought-stricken Bolivian highlands.Kino LorberWEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY Daniel Radcliffe dons some seriously curly locks to play the parodist singer, in a movie that is itself a parody of a biopic. (Nov. 4 on Roku)FALLING FOR CHRISTMAS A skiing accident results in amnesia (and, presumably, the possibility of a fresh start) for a vain hotel heiress (Lindsay Lohan). (Nov. 10 on Netflix)BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER After Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020, Marvel Studios opted not to recast his role, King T’Challa, in this sequel to “Black Panther.” The character is dead in the new film, which concerns how Wakanda moves forward without him. It also stars Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o. Ryan Coogler returns as director. (Nov. 11 in theaters)A COUPLE In a career that includes more than 40 documentaries, Frederick Wiseman has seldom made features that could qualify as dramatized. But in “A Couple,” the actress Nathalie Boutefeu, who shares screenplay credit with the director, reads adaptations of writings by Sophia Tolstoy, wife of Leo Tolstoy, to explore a famous marriage. (Nov. 11 in theaters)THE FABELMANS If Steven Spielberg’s last name evokes the idea of a story, it’s not too much of a stretch to get from there to “Fabelman” — the surname of Spielberg’s alter-ego family in an autobiographical feature inspired by his childhood. Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen and Gabriel LaBelle star. Tony Kushner wrote the screenplay with Spielberg. (Nov. 11 in theaters)IS THAT BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?!? Elvis Mitchell, a former film critic for The New York Times, directed this documentary on the American revolution in Black filmmaking in the 1970s. Among the interviewees are the filmmaker Charles Burnett (“Killer of Sheep”), Samuel L. Jackson and Whoopi Goldberg. (Nov. 11 on Netflix)MY FATHER’S DRAGON Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 children’s book — about a boy who ventures off to rescue a baby dragon — becomes an animated film directed by Nora Twomey, of the Oscar-nominated “The Breadwinner.” (Nov. 11 on Netflix)THE SON In a companion piece to “The Father,” which won Anthony Hopkins a second Oscar, this Florian Zeller film concerns, naturally, the relationship between a father (Hugh Jackman) and his troubled teenage son, who returns to his life just as he is settling in with a new son and a new partner (Vanessa Kirby). Hopkins and Laura Dern also star. (Nov. 11 in theaters)Laura Dern and Hugh Jackman are exes in “The Son.”Sony PicturesIN HER HANDS The documentarians Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen assemble a portrait of Zarifa Ghafari, the mayor of the Afghan city of Maidan Shahr at the time of filming — and, not incidentally, in her 20s and a woman in a country without many women in power. The documentary follows her through American forces’ withdrawal from the country last year. (Nov. 16 on Netflix)BAD AXE That’s Bad Axe, Mich., where the documentarian David Siev’s parents, one a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, own a restaurant and must grapple with the economic realities of the pandemic and the protests that convulse the city in the wake of the George Floyd killing. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)EO The Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (“Deep End,” “Moonlighting”) riffs, with a bit of a hallucinatory spin, on Robert Bresson’s French classic “Au Hasard Balthazar” with the tale of an itinerant donkey who along its journeys becomes a passive witness to human cruelty. When Skolimowski shared the jury prize at Cannes, he thanked all six donkeys who played the role by name. (Nov. 18 in theaters)THE INSPECTION For his first dramatic feature, Elegance Bratton, who has worked as a documentarian and street photographer, wrote and directed this autobiographically inspired film about a gay Black man’s time in basic training in the Marines. Jeremy Pope plays Bratton’s alter ego, Bokeem Woodbine a sergeant and Gabrielle Union the protagonist’s mother. (Nov. 18 in theaters)THE MENU Mark Mylod, a regular director on “Succession,” is at the helm of this story of a couple (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) who travel to an island for an evening of molecular gastronomy and end up getting something closer to “The Most Dangerous Game.” Ralph Fiennes plays the chef. (Nov. 18 in theaters)THE PEOPLE WE HATE AT THE WEDDING Nuptials become the occasion for an airing of intrafamilial loathing and reconciliation in a comedy that stars Kristen Bell and Ben Platt as siblings and Allison Janney as the matriarch. (Nov. 18 on Amazon)SHE SAID The New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book on how they broke their landmark article about sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein gets a film adaptation. Zoe Kazan plays Kantor and Carey Mulligan plays Twohey as they try to convince women to talk on the record. Maria Schrader directed. (Nov. 18 in theaters)Carey Mulligan, left, and Zoe Kazan as reporters on the Harvey Weinstein case. JoJo Whilden/Universal PicturesSLUMBERLAND The “Red Sparrow” filmmaker Francis Lawrence directs Jason Momoa as an outlaw in a fairy tale of sorts in which he assists a girl in navigating a dream world. (Nov. 18 on Netflix)THERE THERE Working under pandemic restrictions, Andrew Bujalski (“Support the Girls”) makes a film that consists entirely of conversations; it’s best not to say anymore. Lili Taylor and Lennie James play a couple whose post-one-night-stand discourse kicks off the movie; Molly Gordon and Jason Schwartzman appear elsewhere. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)DEVOTION Jonathan Majors stars as Ensign Jesse L. Brown, the first Black aviator in the United States Navy, and Glen Powell — barely out of the skies since “Top Gun: Maverick” — plays Lt. Thomas J. Hudner Jr., his partner on a dangerous mission during the Korean War. J.D. Dillard directed. (Nov. 23 in theaters)Jonathan Majors, left, and Glen Powell as aviators in the military in the 1950s. Eli Adé/Sony PicturesBONES AND ALL Timothée Chalamet bites into a meaty role as a cannibal drifter. Taylor Russell plays the woman who loves and road-trips with him in a film that reunites Chalamet with his “Call Me by Your Name” director, Luca Guadagnino. It’s based on the novel by Camille DeAngelis. (Nov. 23 in theaters)Taylor Russell, left, and Timothée Chalamet in the cannibal love story “Bones and All.”Yannis Drakoulidis/MGMNANNY Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature, the winner of this year’s United States dramatic competition at Sundance, concerns a Senegalese immigrant (Anna Diop) who takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy white family. During the festival, Manohla Dargis wrote that the film kept her “rapt from the start with its visuals and mysteries, its emotional depths and the tight control” maintained by Jusu. (Nov. 23 in theaters, Dec. 16 on Amazon)STRANGE WORLD Disney pays tribute to 1950s science fiction movies with an animated feature about the Clade family, a clan of explorers investigating an uncharted region. Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid and Gabrielle Union provide some of the Clades’ voices. (Nov. 23 in theaters)THE SWIMMERS Sally El Hosaini directed the opening-night film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a dramatization of the story of Yusra and Sarah Mardini, two sisters from Syria. Yusra competed on the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Olympics. (Nov. 23 on Netflix)The real-life sisters Nathalie, left, and Manal Issa play Syrian sisters in “The Swimmers.”Laura Radford/NetflixDISENCHANTED After finding a storybook life in New York in “Enchanted,” Giselle (Amy Adams), finds that many years later, the bloom is off the rose. So she and her husband (Patrick Dempsey) move to the suburbs. With Maya Rudolph. Adam Shankman directed. (Nov. 24 on Disney+)DecemberFRAMING AGNES Using the story of Agnes, a transgender woman who took part in studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s, as a jumping-off point, this combination of documentary and dramatization examines how trans history is written. (Dec. 2 in theaters)The documentary “Framing Agnes” takes a closer look at trans history.Kino LorberLADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER This time, Emma Corrin embodies D.H. Lawrence’s unfulfilled British noblewoman. Jack O’Connell plays the gamekeeper she takes up with. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre directed. (Dec. 2 on Netflix)SPOILER ALERT: THE HERO DIES Michael Showalter, who mined thematically similar territory in “The Big Sick,” directed this adaptation of Michael Ausiello’s memoir of a longtime relationship altered by a terminal illness. Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge and Sally Field star. (Dec. 2 in theaters)VIOLENT NIGHT You might have thought the weirdest appearance of Santa Claus this season was by the actual democratic socialist of that name from North Pole, Alaska, who ran for a seat in Congress. But it could be in this movie, which stars David Harbour as Santa Claus, who is fortunately making his rounds when mercenaries attempt a home invasion. The “Atomic Blonde” and “John Wick” producers had a hand in this. (Dec. 2 in theaters)WOMEN TALKING Women in a religious colony wrestle with their beliefs after a series of sexual assaults by the men. Sarah Polley directed and wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of Miriam Toews’s novel. The cast is formidable: It features Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand, among others. (Dec. 2 in theaters)From left, Michelle McLeod, Sheila McCarthy, Liv McNeil, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Kate Hallett, Rooney Mara and Judith Ivey in “Women Talking.”Michael Gibson/Orion ReleasingTHE WONDER When an 11-year-old girl in the Irish Midlands seems to live for months without eating food, a British nurse (Florence Pugh) investigates. Sebastián Lelio (“A Fantastic Woman”) directed this adaptation, set in the 19th century, of a novel by the “Room” author Emma Donoghue. (Dec. 7 on Netflix)EMPIRE OF LIGHT The writer-director Sam Mendes, reuniting with the cinematographer Roger Deakins (who has hopefully gotten some rest after the gymnastics of “1917”), directs what is described as story about the “magic of cinema.” It’s set in Britain in the 1980s. Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward star. (Dec. 9 in theaters)GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO The “Nightmare Alley” filmmaker, who shares directorial credit (if not the title) with the animation director Mark Gustafson, mounts a stop-motion version of the story of the puppet who became a boy. Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton are in the vocal cast. (Dec. 9 on Netflix)SOMETHING FROM TIFFANY’S “And I said, ‘What about ‘Something From Tiffany’s’?” Zoey Deutch stars in a comedy about an errant engagement ring. Daryl Wein directed. (Dec. 9 on Amazon)THE WHALE The plot of Darren Aronofsky’s latest movie bears more than a slight resemblance to that of his film “The Wrestler” (2008). Brendan Fraser plays an overweight teacher who wants to make amends with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink, from “Stranger Things”). Samuel D. Hunter wrote the script, adapting his own play. (Dec. 9 in theaters)Brendan Fraser is a father hoping to reconcile with his daughter in the drama “The Whale.”A24A MAN CALLED OTTO In what, after “Elvis,” is turning out to be a year of stunt casting for America’s most affable actor, Tom Hanks has to be convincing as, get this, a curmudgeon, albeit one who thaws a bit when he meets a new neighbor. Mariana Treviño also stars. Marc Forster directed. (Dec. 14 in theaters)AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER It is now 2022. More years have elapsed between the release of “Avatar” (2009) and this much-awaited sequel than had elapsed between “Avatar” and “Titanic” (1997) — and that was considered a very long gap. Is James Cameron working faster or slower than the technology evolves? He’d better pick up the pace on “Avatar 3” if he hopes to finish it while movie theaters still exist. (Dec. 16 in theaters)BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s feature “Birdman,” was subtitled “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.” But as a phrase, “False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” definitely rivals that in sheer opacity. The film’s plot involves a journalist who returns to his native Mexico, where he is, per the official summary, pushed to “an existential limit.” Daniel Giménez Cacho stars. (Dec. 16 on Netflix)THE VOLCANO: RESCUE FROM WHAKAARI Rory Kennedy, the documentarian who earlier this year made a case (or, rather, a movie) against Boeing, memorializes a deadly volcanic eruption that occurred in New Zealand in 2019. (Dec. 16 on Netflix)I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY Naomi Ackie stars as Whitney Houston in this biopic of the soaring-voiced pop star. Stanley Tucci plays the architect of her career Clive Davis, who is one of the movie’s producers. Kasi Lemmons directed, from a screenplay by Mr. Biopic, Anthony McCarten (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Darkest Hour,” “The Theory of Everything”). (Dec. 21 in theaters)PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH Antonio Banderas once again lends his voice to the footwear’d feline — not the fairy-tale character, exactly, but a part of the extended “Shrek” cinematic universe. Olivia Colman and Salma Hayek Pinault purr alongside him. (Dec. 21 in theaters)CORSAGE Technically, in 1878, Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) could not have heard “As Tears Go By” with a harp as instrumentation — or, for that matter, been photographed as a movie subject on flexible film. (This was still the era of plates.) But these sorts of anachronisms crop up periodically throughout the director Marie Kreutzer’s interpretation of Elisabeth’s life. (Dec. 23 in theaters)GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, the detective with a French name and a Foghorn Leghorn drawl, as a character in “Knives Out” put it, has another mystery on his hands. The cast (and, probably, suspect list) includes Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., Kathryn Hahn and Jessica Henwick. (Dec. 23 on Netflix)LET IT BE MORNING A Palestinian man returns to the village of his upbringing for a wedding, and he is trapped there, with the rest of the residents, when Israeli forces blockade the area. Eran Kolirin directed this adaptation of a novel by Sayed Kashua. (Dec. 23 in theaters)LIVING The director Oliver Hermanus and the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, serving here as the screenwriter, remake Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” in an idiom not wildly removed from that of Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day.” Bill Nighy plays a postwar civil servant in London whose great ambition, after receiving a terminal diagnosis, is to build a playground. Aimee Lou Wood and Tom Burke co-star. (Dec. 23 in theaters)Bill Nighy is a buttoned-up civil servant facing the end of his life in “Living.”Ross Ferguson/Sony Pictures ClassicsTHE PALE BLUE EYE Adapted from the novel by Louis Bayard, this is the second fall film set against the backdrop of Edgar Allan Poe’s formative years at West Point. Like “Raven’s Hollow” (see above), “The Pale Blue Eye” has the precocious Poe finding himself in the middle of a mystery. Harry Melling plays Poe, Christian Bale is a detective, and Gillian Anderson and Lucy Boynton co-star. Scott Cooper (“Black Mass”) directed. (Dec. 23 in theaters)BABYLON The writer-director Damien Chazelle returns to La La Land — or, more precisely, Hollywood — to imagine the drama that unfolded in the movie industry during the transition to sound. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva have their names on the marquee. (Dec. 25 in theaters)ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA THE MUSICAL The stage musical version of Dahl’s novel gets the screen treatment (with the same director, Matthew Warchus). Alisha Weir plays the title character and Lashana Lynch the warmhearted Miss Honey. Emma Thompson — whose fat suit has already prompted chatter over questions of representation — plays the gorgonlike Miss Trunchbull. (Dec. 25 on Netflix)THEY CLONED TYRONE John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris play characters who stumble on some sort of government conspiracy. It’s a secret, even from us, but an educated guess is that it involves someone named Tyrone getting cloned. Juel Taylor directed. (Dec. 30 on Netflix)TURN EVERY PAGE Lizzie Gottlieb, daughter of the famed editor Robert Gottlieb, directed this portrait of her father and his friendship with Robert A. Caro, who is still toiling away on the final volume of his multi-book Lyndon Johnson biography, a volume that Gottlieb, in his 90s, hopes to edit. (Dec. 31 in theaters)WHITE NOISE Adam Driver plays the chairman of a college department in the field of “Hitler studies”; Greta Gerwig is his wife, who may be experiencing strange memory lapses. Together, with children from other marriages and the TV always humming, they confront environmental disaster and their fear of mortality in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 postmodern novel. Don Cheadle and Raffey Cassidy co-star. (Dec. 30 on Netflix)Adam Driver stars in “White Noise” alongside, from left, Greta Gerwig, May Nivola, Sam Nivola and Raffey Cassidy.Wilson Webb/NetflixCompiled with the assistance of Gabe Cohn and Shivani Gonzalez. More

  • in

    ‘Hold Me Tight’ Review: An Étude in the Key of Grief

    In Mathieu Amalric’s new film, Vicky Krieps plays a mother who tries to stay close to her family by running away.Early one morning, Clarisse (Vicky Krieps) slips out of the house, climbs into the 1979 AMC Pacer that has been languishing under a tarp, and drives away, leaving behind her husband, Marc (Arieh Worthalter), and their two young children, Lucie (Anne-Sophie Bowen-Chatet) and Paul (Sacha Ardilly).This act of maternal abandonment, at the beginning of Mathieu Amalric’s “Hold Me Tight,” stirs up some familiar emotions and questions. What is Clarisse running away from, or toward? Is this liberation or betrayal? The answers aren’t what you might expect. “Hold Me Tight” doesn’t depend on plot twists or dramatic revelations — the central mystery is resolved early on — but if you don’t want the beginning spoiled you may hesitate to read further.This isn’t a movie about wanderlust or marital discontent; it’s about grief. Clarisse isn’t merely unhappy. Her world has been shattered, and her flight represents a desperate attempt to put it back together. She runs away from her family because she has already lost them, to a deadly avalanche during a ski vacation in Spain. Her departure keeps Paul, Lucie and Marc alive, in her mind and in front of our eyes, in a chronology that runs parallel to her wanderings.They go on without her, the years of their lives filling the months she spends on the road, revisiting the scene of her family’s death and drifting from town to town. The kids grow up, with new actors (Juliette Benveniste and Aurèle Grzesik) playing the older versions. Lucie, a gifted musician, is an especially vivid presence. Her piano playing, which progresses from a halting attempt at Beethoven’s “Für Elise” to a commanding rendition of Ligeti’s “Musica Ricercata,” is an important element in the film’s story and a driver of its moods. Bowen-Chatet and Benveniste both actually play the music, which lends gravity and credibility to the character. “My daughter is Martha Argerich,” Clarisse declares after seeing some of a documentary about that Argentine virtuoso. For a moment, it sounds less like a fantasy born of bereavement than like a proud mother’s wishful boast.Do Clarisse’s projections of the family’s life without her represent a coping mechanism or a form of denial? Amalric, adapting a play by Claudine Galea, seems less interested in the psychological implications of Clarisse’s behavior than in the structural and formal challenges her situation presents. He doesn’t mark a boundary between the real and the unreal, but rather treats them as equivalent, cutting from Clarisse to her family as if they were separated only by geography.This generates a particular kind of suspense, as you wonder whether and how the two strands of the story might collide, and to what effect. When the climax arrives, it’s unnerving but also tidy. For all the intensity of Krieps’s performance and the power of the piano repertoire, “Hold Me Tight” proceeds through the mourning process with a strange detachment, using Clarisse’s agony as scaffolding for ideas about memory and storytelling that seem more imposed on life than pulled from it.Hold Me TightNot rated. In French and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

  • in

    ‘Clerks III’ Review: From the Heart

    Kevin Smith revisits his convenience store characters, and his life, with this sequel.These days more than ever, personal filmmaking deserves to be celebrated merely for manifesting itself. Which doesn’t mean that personal filmmaking doesn’t come in some confounding forms.From his first feature, the very low-budget, black-and-white “Clerks” (1994), the writer-director Kevin Smith has only ever made movies about himself. Not just himself as a person, but himself as a sensibility: quick-witted, working-class, pop-culture-obsessive wiseass Jersey boy. In “Clerks” he put it across perfectly. In the film’s second sequel, “Clerks III,” he is not nearly as deft.Paradoxically, some of this is because of Smith’s relative maturity. A husband and a father and a heart attack survivor who is now 52, he’s got more on his mind than being a wiseass. Instead of following up the 2006 film “Clerks II” with more of that picture’s profane exuberant absurdity, he brings back Dante and Randal and Jay and Silent Bob and does some stocktaking.The movie is bouncy at first, though the actors Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson, so rawly naturalistic in the earlier movies, here seem like they’re doing bits. Still, three words characterize the first third or so of the picture: not funny enough. As in, a new character is nicknamed Blockchain. Which is funnier than that character nicknamed Podcast in the most recent “Ghostbusters” movie, but, you know.Randall has a heart attack, and, realizing he has to make something of his life, decides to direct a movie. About, yes, working at a convenience store. Not funny enough turns to often not funny, a star-studded audition scene (Ben Affleck! Danny Trejo! Freddie Prinze Jr.!) notwithstanding.While Smith has often broken the fourth wall in his pictures, here he uses the make-a-movie plot to go big-time meta. But his idea of meta fails to split the difference between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the French New Novel. It has more the manner of a pinball in a machine that’s about to enter tilt mode.For instance, at one point the trench-coated Silent Bob, played as ever by Smith, breaks character and, as Smith the filmmaker, lectures Randal about the hideous color scheme of a shot he’s framing. The joke falls flat, and not just because Smith’s visual mode is rarely mistaken for that of “The Red Shoes.”The wobbly ending combines the confounding and frequently schticky meta mode with the forced sentimentality of that Nicole Kidman AMC Theaters promo. My rooting interest in Smith notwithstanding (full disclosure: I, too, am a wiseass Jersey boy), it made me wince.Clerks IIIRated R. It’s a Kevin Smith movie. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

  • in

    ‘Medieval’ Review: Flaying Alive

    Living up to its title, this ultraviolent ode to a Czech national hero bludgeons you into submission.A cohort of notable actors — including Michael Caine, Ben Foster and Matthew Goode — tromp through “Medieval,” Petr Jakl’s lumbering epic about the storied Czech warrior Jan Zizka. The movie’s real stars, though, are its gaping wounds and mangled limbs, the singing of scythe and ax more eloquent than any dialogue.On land and underwater, the verisimilitude of the violence is numbing. Horses are elbowed over cliffs; a man’s brain is leisurely puréed by means of a saw through the ears. By the end, scarcely an orifice remains inviolate, the camera’s blood lust seemingly insatiable. Yet beneath the clanging of chain mail and the gurgles of the dying, a story peeks out: The throne of the Holy Roman Empire is up for grabs and coveted by two feuding brothers. To prevent the corrupt sibling (Goode, lazily scheming) and his wealthy wing man from prevailing, a powerful lord (Caine) arranges to have the wing man’s fiancée, Lady Katherine (a wan Sophie Lowe), kidnapped. As operatic choirs muster on the soundtrack, a morose mercenary named Zizka (Foster), gets the assignment; a small empire’s worth of knights and peasants gets kaput.Glum and bludgeoning, “Medieval” serves up a melancholic hero — see how it pains Zizka to take all these lives! — and a limp love interest-cum-bargaining chip. Hauled from one battle to the next, Katherine can do little but gaze, mouth agape, at the carnage, rallying now and then to declaim on the era’s social inequities and to pack maggots into Zizka’s newly vacated eye socket.“Are you all right?” Zizka tenderly inquires at one point, though, if you ask me, the movie’s addition of that hungry lion was maybe a barbarism too far.MedievalRated R. Fans of slicing, smashing, gouging and impaling will be in heaven. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

  • in

    ‘Pinocchio’ Review: As the Story Grows

    This live action and animated reimagining of the classic fairy tale takes too much time relaying its narrative.Surprising that Disney hired two previous directors before handing the strings of its partially-animated “Pinocchio” to Robert Zemeckis, Hollywood’s Geppetto, the creator on a quest to transform pixels into real boys (and girls and Grendels). Under Zemeckis’s attentive eye, Pinocchio’s yellow cap appears made of felt and his white gloves, affectionately hand-knit. When the marionette spirals his head like a pinewood Linda Blair, his joints make a satisfying creak. But boy oh real boy, is the script by Zemeckis and Chris Weitz a lifeless chunk of wood.The reimagining goes awry in the opening number — not “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the Oscar-winner that ascended to become the company’s signature tune, but a new ballad, “When He Was Here With Me,” sung by Geppetto (Tom Hanks) about his freshly concocted dead son. Someone wished to burden the old whittler with more motivation, and tacked on a dead wife to boot.This interminable shop sequence is paced so slowly that when a window closes, the image loiters until its latch drops into place. So slowly that when the Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo) freezes a screeching cuckoo clock, it feels like a cruel prank. So slowly that we forget that Hanks is ranked high among the most charming screen performers of all time as he opens his mouth to sing a second unwelcome new song in which he rhymes “Pinocchio” with “Holy Smoke-i-o.” And when Pinocchio (voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finally head outside for fresh air, things do not improve.The key problem is the film’s fear of the original author Carlo Collodi’s theme: that children are raw material inclined to sloth, foolishness and self-serving fibs. (Collodi’s puppet kills the cricket and is haunted by its ghost.) Walt Disney’s 1940 cartoon softened the tyke’s sins to rambunctious naïveté. Now, he’s been flattened out of having a personality at all. His lumpen goodness turns the hot-tempered fairy tale into a dull after-school special about peer pressure, which seems to suggest that Geppetto should have just carved himself a helicopter to parent the boy.In place of temptation, the film serves up bizarre plot-fillers. Pinocchio learns about taxes and horse dung, meets a love interest (Kyanne Lamaya) and stares blankly at zingers directed toward the modern enticements of social media. (Pleasure Island now includes Contempt Corner where kids wave placards haranguing each other to shut up.) Joy can be found only in Luke Evans’s scary-fun Coachman (now saddled with unnecessary smoke monster minions) and a line where Jiminy seems to comment on the last decades of Zemeckis’s career: “Sure, there are other ways to make a boy — but I don’t think Geppetto gets out much, and I guess it’s just the best he could do with the tools he’s got.”PinocchioRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

  • in

    ‘Speak No Evil’ Review: Impolite Company

    A weekend visit turns nightmarish for an innocent Danish couple in this coldblooded satirical thriller.The opening shot of “Speak No Evil” is of a car’s headlights plowing through the darkness of a deserted, tree-lined road. The image is innocent enough, yet the soundtrack vibrates with such disproportionate dread that when, seconds later, the road was replaced by a sunny vacation scene, I still had goose bumps.Gliding inexorably from squirmy to sinister to full-on shocking, this icy satire of middle-class mores, confidently directed by Christian Tafdrup, is utterly fearless in its mission to unsettle. When a Danish couple, Bjorn and Louise (Morten Burian and Sidsel Siem Koch), receives an invitation to visit the Dutch couple they met months earlier on a Tuscan vacation, they’re initially reluctant. Yet both families have young children who seemed to get along, and it would be ungracious to refuse a long weekend in the countryside. As one of their friends points out, What’s the worst that could happen?We’re about to find out. The sight of their destination, a middle-of-nowhere farmhouse, is only the beginning of the Danes’ misgivings. Their hosts, Patrick and Karin (Fedja van Huet and Karina Smulders), are jovial and welcoming, but why does Patrick insist on feeding wild boar to Louise, knowing she’s vegetarian? And why did he lie about being a doctor, then admit he has never held a job at all? Invited to dine in an otherwise deserted restaurant, Bjorn and Louise watch uncomfortably as their hosts enthusiastically make out on the dance floor. At night, a child’s agonized, animalistic moans reverberate through the house, the sounds explained by Patrick as a result of their son’s speech defect: a foreshortened tongue.Too polite to confront their hosts’ increasingly outrageous behavior, the Danes are ill-prepared when it begins to impact their preteen daughter. In the press notes, Tafdrup, who wrote the script with his brother, Mads Tafdrup, explains his belief that social conditioning has made us too refined, blunting our survival instincts and even our common sense. For Bjorn, though, the aversion to confrontation is more complicated: Irked by his overly predictable life, he harbors a nascent attraction to Patrick’s unfettered solipsism.Cool to the touch and photographed with unerring sophistication by Erik Molberg Hansen, “Speak No Evil” is a slow-closing trap whose final 15 minutes are genuinely terrifying. As an examination of pure maleficence, the movie is less than thorough. But as a warning to always listen to your gut? It’s perfect.Speak No EvilNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

  • in

    ‘The Story of Film: A New Generation’ Review: The Case for Modern Movies

    The latest installment in the filmmaker-critic Mark Cousins’s survey of movie history focuses on 21st-century developments.A decade after presenting a guided tour of cinema history in the 15-hour docuseries “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” the filmmaker and critic Mark Cousins checks in on recent developments in “The Story of Film: A New Generation.”This latest installment is a gratifyingly international survey in which Cousins, who narrates, applies his analytical eye to movies that are still settling in the mind. If you feel like you haven’t fully absorbed such significant films as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Cemetery of Splendour” (2016) or Mati Diop’s “Atlantics” (2019), Cousins’s consideration of their visual strategies will make you want to watch them again.Cousins’s assessments offer plenty to argue with, but it’s possible to enjoy “A New Generation” without agreeing that “Booksmart” “extends the world of film comedy,” as he claims, or that a shot in “It Follows” merits comparison to the camerawork in Michael Snow’s landmark experimental film “La Région Centrale.”Despite leading with “Joker” and “Frozen,” Cousins goes well beyond titles familiar to western audiences, with Indian cinema (“Gangs of Wasseypur,” “Reason”) coming in for particular praise. He also highlights works that test the boundaries of what qualifies as cinema — Beyoncé’s visual album “Lemonade,” Tsai Ming-liang’s virtual-reality experiment “The Deserted” and the interactive “Bandersnatch” episode of “Black Mirror.”If anything, technological shifts — there’s discussion of the iPhone-shot “Tangerine,” and of “Leviathan,” in which, according to Cousins, the filmmakers literalized the concept of a fisheye lens by attaching cameras to fish — get short shrift. When Cousins says that lockdown gave people time to watch “far more movies,” and that “when public life returned, we marched to the movies again,” his “we” does not entirely comport with box office realities. “A New Generation” means to look forward to a bright future of moviemaking, but it’s possible it’s a future that may not come to pass.The Story of Film: A New GenerationNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. In theaters. More

  • in

    When Weird Al Yankovic Met Daniel Radcliffe, Things Got … Well, You Know

    For their decidedly nonfactual rock biopic, the pop-music parodist and the “Harry Potter” star found themselves on the same wavelength.The real Weird Al Yankovic, left, and his movie double, Daniel Radcliffe. “I hope this confuses a lot of people,” the musician said of their biopic.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesListen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Generally speaking, Weird Al Yankovic and Daniel Radcliffe are never going to be mistaken for each other. Yankovic is the lanky, longhaired Southern California dude who became an accordion whiz and a master parodist of pop music. Radcliffe is the more compact, London-born wunderkind of the “Harry Potter” movies who has since graduated into an eclectic acting career.Still, this past winter, during the making of the new movie “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” their mutual presence on the set occasionally led to confusion. When crew members called for “Weird Al,” they wanted the actor playing him, which meant Radcliffe. Eventually, for maximum clarity, they began referring to the authentic Yankovic as “Real Al,” though some further disorientation was inevitable.As Yankovic explained in a recent conversation with Radcliffe, “Every time I would walk by the ‘Weird Al’ sign on your trailer, I’d be like” — he paused and acted out an exaggerated double take — “Oh, no, that’s not me.”This is the effect that the makers of “Weird” are hoping it will have on audiences when Roku releases the biopic on Nov. 4. It is a wildly satirical, highly nonfactual telling of Yankovic’s ascent from a geeky young accordionist to the beloved performer of hit songs like “My Bologna,” “Another One Rides the Bus” and “Eat It,” embellished with stories of sex, drugs and jungle combat that never really happened to him.“I hope this confuses a lot of people,” Yankovic said of “Weird,” which he wrote with the film’s director, Eric Appel. “We want to lead them down a path and think, Is this a real biopic? Is this the real story? The movie starts out pretty normal. Then it progressively goes way off the rails.”Central to fulfilling that premise is the casting of Radcliffe, an enthusiastic Yankovic fan who looks little like the musician and had no desire to impersonate him.Radcliffe was a longtime fan of comedy musicians like Tom Lehrer and Weird Al. In his first meeting with Yankovic, he remembers thinking, “If this happens, my girlfriend is going to be so thrilled.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesFor all the attention he brings to it, Radcliffe said, he appreciated “Weird” precisely because it allowed him to follow his post-“Potter” path into more unexpected roles. Playing Yankovic, at least as he’s depicted in the movie, was the exact assignment Radcliffe was looking for — even if the title put some constraints on how he could describe the film.Radcliffe started to say, “There was nothing weird — see, it makes the word ‘weird’ hard to use in other contexts — there was nothing unusual about it.” He added that even before he had read the script, and was simply asked about playing Yankovic, “I was very, very into the idea.”Over a breakfast interview last month at a downtown Manhattan restaurant, Yankovic, 62, and Radcliffe, 33, exhibited an adorkable affection for each other. There were a lot of “you go ahead,” “no, you continue” exchanges. It was as if neither man knew who was the celebrity and who was the admirer.They said there was a similar energy in their first video chat in the winter of 2020, when Yankovic was pitching Radcliffe on the idea of starring in the movie. “I have a real problem in meetings sometimes when I like something and I want to do it,” Radcliffe said. “I just gush in various ways. I get very, very repetitive.”“Weird” was very much a passion project for Yankovic, who has released 14 studio albums since 1983 but starred in just one movie, the 1989 cult comedy “UHF.”In 2010, Appel wrote and directed a tongue-in-cheek trailer for a nonexistent movie, also called “Weird.” Starring Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”) as a hard-partying version of Yankovic, the video was released on Funny or Die and became a viral success.Over the years, Yankovic showed the fake trailer at his concerts, where some fans believed it was advertising a real film.“People would be like, ‘You should make a whole movie,’” Yankovic said. “I was like, ‘Nah, it’s a trailer. It’s what it’s supposed to be — it’s a gag.’”But more recently, following the success of other rock biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Rocketman,” Yankovic began to take seriously the idea of a feature-length version of “Weird.”The real Weird Al in concert in Chicago in 1985, above, and Radcliffe as the accordion slinger in the movie, right. The musician taught the actor enough of the instrument to fake it onscreen.Paul Natkin/Getty ImagesAaron Epstein/RokuHe was also annoyed at what he felt were unnecessary changes to the factual stories of the rock stars depicted in these other movies. He pointed to a scene in “Rocketman” when Elton John impulsively chooses his new surname after he spots a portrait of the Beatles and zeros in on John Lennon.“Everybody who’s an Elton John fan knows it was inspired by Long John Baldry,” Yankovic said, raising his voice just slightly. “I guess they thought nobody knows who Long John Baldry is.”An initial effort to pitch “Weird” around Hollywood was unsuccessful, and studios seemed to expect a movie that more directly lampooned existing biopics, in the same way Yankovic’s songs parodied other hit singles. “People thought it was going to be more spoofier — more ‘Naked Gun,’ more ‘Scary Movie’ — than it is,” Appel said.So he and Yankovic sat together in a coffee shop, watching the trailers for other biopics and looking for common storytelling tropes. Together they wrote a script in which, Yankovic said, “facts are changed arbitrarily, just to change them.”No matter what “Weird” may depict, Yankovic did not compose his song “My Bologna” in a spontaneous moment of out-of-body inspiration. Also, he said, “I did record it in a bathroom but not in a bus station. Why did we change it? Just ’cause that’s what biopics do.”Their movie still needed a leading man, and they thought of Radcliffe, who they knew appreciated comedy musicians like Tom Lehrer.Radcliffe, it turned out, liked Yankovic’s music also — and so, too, did his longtime girlfriend, the actress Erin Darke, who had been a fan for years and often played Yankovic’s albums on road trips.(Throughout their first video call about “Weird,” Radcliffe said in an excited whisper, “I was going, If this happens, my girlfriend is going to be so thrilled.”)More crucially, Radcliffe said he felt “Weird” offered the artistic liberty he has sought on films like the biographical drama “Kill Your Darlings,” which cast him as the poet Allen Ginsberg, or “Swiss Army Man,” a dark comedy in which he played a highly versatile corpse.“Whenever I get a chance to throw myself into something, I will,” Radcliffe said.Even before Radcliffe had seen a script, “I was very, very into the idea” of playing Yankovic, he said.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesCompared to a scene in “Weird” when the fictionalized Yankovic is on a psychedelic drug trip and hatches from a giant egg, Radcliffe said, “maybe only Paul Dano riding me like a Jet Ski in ‘Swiss Army Man’ comes close to the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.”He added, “There was definitely a freedom in the version of Al that is in the script. And it is so insane.” Turning to Yankovic, he said, “You didn’t murder many, many people.”“Not a lot,” Yankovic replied. “Very few.”With Radcliffe on board, Roku picked up the movie. But the company agreed to only 18 days of filming, which made for an incredibly tight schedule on a project in which he had to perform several musical numbers (lip-syncing Yankovic’s original vocals), as well as execute a couple of action sequences.“On ‘Potter,’ one of those scenes could take 16 days,” Radcliffe said.So he used his preproduction time to learn his lines and choreography and get into top physical shape. (“I did end up realizing I am shirtless in the Weird Al movie more than anything else I have done,” he said. “Most of it was scripted, but I hadn’t really taken it in.”)And once cameras started rolling, everyone held on tight. “The Covid of it all was terrifying, especially for me and Eric,” Radcliffe said. “There is no Plan B. We just have to not get sick.”Even before filming started, the comedian Patton Oswalt, who had been cast in a key role as Dr. Demento, the radio host who gave Yankovic some of his earliest airtime, broke his foot. Though there was some talk of whether Oswalt could play the part on crutches, Rainn Wilson (“The Office”) took over on short notice.The production was also buoyed by a committed performance from Evan Rachel Wood (“Westworld”), who plays Madonna — though in this story, the Material Girl is a sly, selfish seductress who is clearly only using Yankovic in hopes that he will parody one of her songs.“I’m amazed the lawyers let us get away with this movie, frankly,” Yankovic said. “But they’re like, Oh, yeah, all public figures — go for it.” (A representative for Madonna did not respond to a request for comment.)As in other rock biopics, Yankovic said, “facts are changed arbitrarily, just to change them” in “Weird.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAppel said Yankovic and Radcliffe were especially important for setting a professional tone while everyone worked at breakneck speed. And during postproduction, Appel continued to communicate closely with Yankovic while the musician has been on a North American concert tour.“When we were mixing the movie, he was on Zoom with us, all day long, from a different city every day,” Appel said. “He’d text me between songs: ‘I think the backing vocals on this song need to get bumped up a tiny bit.’ Then I’d start to respond and he’d say, ‘Oop, gotta go onstage.’”“Weird” is arriving at an awkward moment for the streaming industry, which is in a period of reassessment and retrenchment after years of expansion, and for Roku, whose stock took a beating after the company missed earnings goals this summer.While this might seem to put increased pressure on the movie to deliver an audience, the filmmakers could only shrug their shoulders and say they were just grateful to have made it at all.“This is a new thing for them,” Yankovic said of Roku. “Hopefully this will do well for them.” Radcliffe said he had encountered more curiosity about “Weird” than he did for the Harry Potter reunion special he appeared in for HBO Max this past January. “I still can’t believe people weren’t jumping at the chance to make your movie,” Radcliffe said to Yankovic. “They’ll regret it now.”The Weird Al of “Weird” and Real Al would now go their separate ways: Radcliffe was preparing for a revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” at New York Theater Workshop, and Yankovic was due in Toronto that evening to continue his concert tour. (“We’re in the homestretch now — just three more months,” he said wryly.)But they would always be united by their time together on “Weird” and the unique opportunity that Radcliffe had to learn the accordion from Yankovic — at least enough to make him look like a competent musician in a movie.“When you’re playing Al, to not give it a good, honest attempt seems a wasted opportunity,” Radcliffe said.Yankovic replied, “Every time I see somebody play the accordion on TV or film, it’s always a disappointment.” (As an exception, he singled out Mary Steenburgen, who he said “can actually play.”) “Dan put in the effort,” he said. “I don’t know if he could do a solo performance.”Radcliffe quickly responded, “No way, I could not. But I can do the left hand on ‘My Bologna’ pretty effectively. I learned the bits I needed for the songs, on one hand or the other.” He laughed and added, “Doing them both at the same time is a nonstarter.”Audio produced by More